This game is free on release on Gamepass and PlayStation Extras.

I feel so validated by your spoiler discussion about character motivations! I had the exact same experience. Great review as always

The art style makes me feel sad and warm. Very nostalgic, as though this is what our imagination saw these kinds of games as when they released. There's a lot of moving parts yet it still has a clean consice layout that's not confusing.

Someone has been networking on the rooftop lounges of gaming conventions. Welcome to the list raven!

@7:42 one of my favourite moments was when Yolande was talking with her crew and makes reference to this habit, she said something like "And then he said he never uses his spells on the regular enemies, and only uses the most expensive ones on the boss!" and someone else was like "Well that doesn't sound very fun" lmao

Have you tried Chained Echoes yet? It isn't quite as pretty or mechanically robust as this one, but it seems to address many of the issues you had. The story is consistently good, and the villains' motivations are well presented. It seems to be trying to be a mashup of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Xenogears, and while it never hits the heights of any of those three, the fact that it was able to combine so many aspects of them into a harmonious whole is pretty impressive.

Pro tip from late game. Some locks you cant reduce the power of and have to break them. Make sure to spend hit turns regenerating mana and preparing for locks. Do your damage while breaking the lock so you maintain good mana economy.

I've watched ign, noisy pixel, and at least 4 other reviews of Sea of Stars and this one is easily the best. Thanks for the hard work and detailed explanations. ❤

i love ur reviews. they are so relaxing and you never fail to point out everything i want to know about these games before purchasing

To the food, one interesting thing about that is if you try to always save your MP to heal in combat, or out of it trying to save food, you will run into a lot fights where you start and need to break a "lock" but don't have any MP to do so. Since food is so plentiful, it encourages you to use that instead of casting healing magic out of combat, only to collect mana in the next combat.

This game looks amazing. It releasing at a pretty busy time so I won't have time to play it but will definetly play it in the future. I loved The Messenger and it seems like they managed to deliever again with this game

This game caught my attention. As a fellow Chrono Trigger enjoyer I'm definitely playing this sometime. Sprites look fantastic, and animations are great, too. I especially liked a moment when character used a healing item. He looked into his backpack and showed a played that he has an apple! And then throws it. IDK why, but felt very stylistic.

This looks very awesome. I will definitely be playing this. Great art, lots of charm, fun combat, and no random encounters.

Planned on checking this game out already but thanks for the review anyway! If you liked this, take a look at Chained Echoes. Beautifully done Jrpg without the nonsense grinding etc.

This game has been on my radar for quite some time and I can't wait to play it tomorrow!

I'm so happy that you got the chance to review this early and that it's even on your radar. I adore the Messenger so this game is next on my list right after I finish AC6. Hope you liked it, I'll be back to watch this after I've finished it.

I love your reviews. They always seem thoughtful and answer all the questions I have for a game to have me hyped to play it without spoiling anything

Nice video. I had a great time with Sea of Stars, but didn't know about the shared universe stuffs. Gonna checkout the Messenger! 3:25 Obscure tip, the "turn order" is actually tied to the position slot. So with at least 1 combo points and some swap gymnastic, it's possible to have the same character act twice in a single round. It was fun making the bosses never got their turn by using a certain character skills lol.

The grin on my face when I stepped foot onto Glacial peak and the music started playing was huge. The Messenger is a must play before this game.

I’ve been waiting so long for this game, so excited for all the reviews

I backed this on Kickstarter so I’m glad to hear your thoughts!

I'm at the spoiler stop point and this is where I will end it. Thank you so much for this review. It was very well put together and it flowed well. I was able to listen to it, podcast style while cooking dinner for the family and I was able to keep up. #subscribe

Leaving a like even though I'm stopping at the first spoiler warning. I'll be back to watch the rest in a couple weeks ✌️

I was sold the second you said it was by the messanger devs. I love that game.

Ive been looking out for this game for a while, so excited

Hype for how this one turns out

Man that Soundtrack is fire🔥

I loved the writing of The Massenger & I'm glad it's connected to Sea of Stars, I was laughing most of the time reading the dialogue between characters 😂

I had played the demo a month ago and loved it. Glad to see this review

Cant wait for the physical! Great review

I see there are some environmental puzzles around. If you played it, would you say they are in the scale and type of golden sun on the GBA? one of my fondest memories was solving those puzzles, so having a game with that level of puzzling plus no random encounters would be very enticing for me, even if the story is weaker

Thanks for the review!

Mr de la Toska making me consider getting a JRPG for the first time since the SNES.

This looks sick cant wait

I’m really glad to hear your perspective on the story as a whole, because that’s what matters to me most as well. I’m very interested to hear about what you thought of the writing of the dialogue as a whole too though. That’s what really threw me when I started it today. It all feels very generic and devoid of much feeling or style

i played the demo on PC when it came out and you can really tell that they took alot of influence from chrono trigger and evolved it im def adding to my collection

The music alone is amazing.

Completely completely agree on everything. The story is the one thing that sea of stars doesn’t really nail, and it’s unfortunate because the rest of it is so nice. And the most damning part about it is that it actually has a lot of intriguing elements to its concepts, but they’re only really slightly elaborated on in side content. Hopefully a DLC expands upon some of the more “questionable” decisions. Because it certainly could fix some of the issues Part of me feels that it was intentional in a way….that they wanted to prevent the story from getting too extreme, and to keep it aligned with its influences (chrono trigger especially)

You explained the difficulty so well... I only ever died if I was doing something stupid

I’m not sold on this one. I played the demo and it wasn’t too impressive. Character dialogue is pretty repetitive and doesn’t change much. The world map was more like the world map in Mario 3. Captain Klee Shae? That’s the kind of thing that pulls me right out of the game. That’s feeling I got from the demo, sort of paint by numbers. Like it’s doing an impression of classic rpg’s but lacks an identity of its own. It felt like it didn’t want me to take it seriously, real goofy and light hearted. I want to take my rpg’s seriously. Otherwise it’s difficult to become invested. Sure classics like chrono trigger had silly moments but it took its story seriously and the world and characters felt very real and grounded. The demo looks great but I would expect that given the technology today vs. the 90’s. The music was good but also felt generic, nothing felt unique or stood out to me. The climbing and ledges feel a little undercooked and don’t seem to serve much purpose, didn’t feel very organic. The character portraits were also a little goofy. Nothing wrong with a light hearted, jokey rpg, just not really my preference.

i wonder if future games from the studio will benefit from such an overarching world building architecture, or if say a single game, like sea of stars, suffer when compared with the larger visions of the development studio. does making everything connect damage their current individual projects or support everything as a whole?

I really appreciated this. I’m at Fated Hour and I think I’ll take a break to play The Messenger first, then come back. I’m having such a good time with this game, and I’m aiming for The Best Ending. But it sounds like I’m missing some context that will improve the overall experience, which so far has been quite positive.

Might pick this up while I wait for Born of Bread

So you did get it early! I thought so. Right on, good job. Great video.

I wonder if any devs have thought about how to balance greater dmg recoveries (eg. limit breaks, AOE, multi-targets) not just by attacking/waiting to charge/absorbing points/mad jukes but perhaps party combo attacks/assists? Basically, the easier your party members can be taken out, the harder attrition combat becomes. So good party dynamics and affinities will matter a lot.

I'm hearing a lot of design-philosophy similarities to Chained Echoes, which I really enjoyed. I'm pretty excited for this game, I'm just trying to decide how highly I should prioritize it!

Mitsuda also did music for Inazuma Eleven 😁⚽ My favourite composer for sure!

Thanks for the review. What do you think about Chrono Cross? I recently played for the first time Chrono Trigger and have just started CC and the first impression is that it looks incredible

Have you tried Chained Echoes any any chance?

I had forgotten that this game was coming to exist. Thanks for reminding me.

Rata have you ever played Crosscode? Its a german indie jrpg and i just have to mention it because its really really good and nobody is talking about it.

I stopped at the last spoiler because I'm playing through it right now. thx though. great video. 👍🏽

I enjoyed the artful relic in the demo. Took me 15 attempts before i finally beat the demo boss with that turned on

Your videos are really well written, a lot of cool insight, would be amazing if you could improve your audio/mic quality

Great review - 2 questions 1.What's the tone like? Light and tropey like say DQ11 or dark and serious like FF Tactics? 2.Any decisions/role playing/story branching? Very rare in JRPGs but always worth asking

exciting!

Reminds me of Golden Sun especially with elemental powers

Rata’s got the ability to make me interested in a game bad or not

I just finished the game today. I played The Messenger earlier this year. I do agree that the world building between them is impressive, but I don't really know what to make of the story in Sea of Stars. As a string of events moving you from one area to the next, it did it's job. But the villain's side is very muddy. I really want to play it again with what I know and see if it comes together any better, or if the holes are even wider.

Excellent review, I agree wholeheartedly. The gameplay systems here were all so well done, but the story does leave much to be desired.

Hey ratatoskr, have you seen Under The Mayo's AC6 review? I think he made some reaaaalllly bad takes in that video and I would love to hear you talk about your opinions on AC6 and maybe make a response to him, like you did in the past with people having bad takes on elden ring

They shot for Chrono Trigger and hit it, but also got -Super Mario 64- Super Mario RPG in there. Looks wonderful, a simple and satisfying experience.

I played the demo and loved it. Nothing absolutely revolutionnary but excellent fundamentals.

The massager was a great game ! I’ll be buying sea of stars once I get some money to buy it 😊

I wonder what this stuido will create next. I like that they are making games they loved as kids. I would love a definitive edition of the FFT genre.

I only use the relic that helps get two moves in at once lol

I was never really a JRPG fan, but I bought into the Completionists hype. (Yt channel) now 50 hours later I’ve done all but the 10 bosses on hard mode achievement. It was a fun enough time. I’m giving the messenger a try now.

this feels like more explaining the game’s systems than a review

I still need to finish Chained Echoes. I still need to finish Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I still need to finish Alllllll of the Crossbell arc of Trails. I still need to finish TOTK. If they could just stop pumping out games for a minute then maybe I could catch up. I want Sea of Stars and I’ll get it but it’s gonna sit for a minute

As a 90s kid I never got into the turn-based games. I never got into Rpgs until fable two came out on Xbox 360. After that I fell into the world of Elder scrolls Oblivion, and to this day I love Rpgs. So of course I got BG3 which is my first real turn based RPG game. Loved it, then decided to give this a shot because of the tern based RPG style. The nostalgic vibes also I appreciate. Surprisingly very well done game. Some of the areas reminded me of the legend of Zelda a link to the past from my super Nintendo days.

The messenger is so fun

Would’ve been nice if you broke a sun/moon lock for every living mana you use (up to 3) on a normal attack, rather than just 1 regardless of how many you use.

This seems _very_ Chained Echoes esque. Definitely playing this cuz CE is amazing.

I'm curious if you played Chained Echoes? IMO It has the best story in this genre.

I have a couple days off work should I buy this or blasphemous 2 or chained echoes or that Ara game, Ara fell i think?

There is a Relic that straight up just makes the game harder with some tweaks, it removes 95% the character's HP, but timing blocks downs the damage to 1, and timing attacks doubles damage, so it's still making it harder but gives some advantages

shocked this isnt an ac6 video. more shocked this is a game im going to have to play(love how the turnbased combat looks). also completely annoyed there is another game i really want to play. best i can do right now is wishlist. too many games lol

I love how noticeably smooth and slow the review narration is. Plus, your voice is so soothing that it makes me sleepy. I would listen to a storytime with your nice voice narration. Anyways, awesome video!

Did you do the true ending? Or just the first one?

I just finished the game, I loved all of it EXCEPT the ending. I was very confused by how it all wrapped up.

So true

Meh. I found The Messenger to be overrated. It didnt feel like Ninja Gaiden to me other than some of the gameplay elements. The music is great at times but nothing near as good as Ninja Gaiden. Also I dont like how they tried to deliver a big story through slow old school textboxes. Ninja Gaiden was revolutionary for its time for delivering its story through cutscenes. Thus looks decent though and Ill try it out later today.

Can we get a "why you're playing AC6 wrong" video? I think you'd have a field day if you checked out a couple big streamers, people are having a hard time with this one I know it's not related to sea of stars but I don't care about this gene and I'm commenting to bring wealth to the Rat King, leave me alone

I hope you can play Chained Echoes.

Golden Sun vibes....

Ratatoskr you gotta play Chained Echoes.

Sooo armored core review when?

AC6 REVIEW WHEN

No random encounters is how *all* turn based jrpg’s should be done.

Very interesting and disappointing to hear that it is highly recommended that people play the messenger first. I want to check this game out and get the most out of it, but I haven’t played the messenger, and I have no interest in playing it.

😊 I just quit playing it once I got to the end game and I don't know why but I'm thinking it's because the story kind of bored me. Other than that I really liked it. Need to go back and finish it

Make a Chrono Trigger video ❤

I'm going to watch a little bit but I am only an hour in the game so few far

GAME OF THE YEAR!

man wish you'd check out Chained Echoes if you want a game to recapture the spirit of chrono trigger

Im back after finishing the game. And yes, those two motivation was terrible. But I was fine for the self contained stakes, since the emotion was there, so I dont really care about the cosmic wars in the background.

I seriously appreciate the breadth of games rataoskr covers. Definitely not afraid to cover what he enjoys vs what might get views

The complaints about the ending in particular, about the ending being abrupt, largely are resolved by the true ending. Thats not to say that the main plot is now made breathtaking with it, but its above average. As for Aephorul’s motivations, I think it’s fairly obvious what they are especially if you listen to Teaks story on him. A scientist at heart that along the way goes off into depravity and cruelty, who is content on playing a grand zero sum game with Re’shan for the sake of that experimentation. Erlina & Brugraves on the other hand are characters with weak motivations. That just is what it is. Moraine also I think falls victim to that for what occurs with him around the game’s mid point.

I started playing the messenger. Got to the area with the ice surfaces. Stopped playing. Fuck that.

Total pass for me bot worth it 😮‍💨